Evaluation and Initial Findings

Evaluation of the activity and initial findings were derived from analysis of the data sources detailed in section 1.8.

From my observations and field notes, I noted that most groups appeared animated enough but I did not see the levels of enthusiasm I had observed in the pilot activities. This was possibly due to the older age of the children, the fact that they had visited the reserve before, or the design of the

activity. Figure 5.4: Y5 taking photographs for the LifeCycle of Plants topic

I saw several groups referring to the eBooks as they went around, and noted that all groups were using the iPods and iPads to take close-up photographs (see Figure 5.4); I also observed one member of Mrs Baxter’s group using an iPod to record the following: “The oak tree has grown around 3 or 4 centimetres, the buds are starting to get bigger, and the leaves are showing”, highlighting her understanding of the task objectives.

I observed that it was often girls that were leading the task within groups, with some boys conspicuously less engaged; for example, three boys were overheard discussing the intricacies of the online game Minecraft during an observation period of 5 minutes, and this

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conversation appeared to have continued when I caught up with them approximately 15 minutes later (see Figure 5.5).

Figure 5.5: Y5 boys off-task discussing Minecraft

I noticed that this lack of collaboration occasionally resulted in the girls good-humouredly resorting to ‘extreme measures’ (such as tapping a boy in their group with a ruler) in an attempt to get them to take part.

5.3.4 Follow-up Activities

Consistent with the experience of the museum-based activity, neither teacher posted follow- up activities on the blog, with both citing time pressures (cf. Jones, 2004; Harris et al., 2009; BBC, 2014) and technical issues connected with the upgrading of the browser as reasons. I also learned later from Miss Hope that political pressure from the school ICT co-ordinator had resulted in all teachers being asked to ‘do more’ with the school Edublogs site. Despite this, the children in Miss Hope’s class continued to engage strongly with their blog on a social level, publishing some 258 posts in the first month.

Fulfilling my intentions to lighten the burden of assessment on teachers, in the early weeks of the activity I created an exemplar poster for display on the class whiteboard to support the summative exercise and to act as inspiration. I also ensured that the best photographs were printed out once the outings had taken place, to enable each group to make up their poster.

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During their semi-structured interviews, I presented both Miss Hope and Mrs Baxter with video evidence that appeared to highlight gender differences in pupil’s behavioural patterns during the activity. The observation that the girls appeared to have been more on-task in this activity than the boys was corroborated by both teachers, and highlighted as representative of what went on in the classroom; Mrs Baxter commented that: “The boys get easily distracted - they look for distraction”, whileMiss Hope, echoing the findings of McPhee et al. (2013), expanded on this point:

In general, girls can plan ahead, they can identify the steps that are going to lead them there, and they just get on with it; boys can get easily side-tracked by shiny objects [laughs], ICT, they want to just explore, and mess around, and then they go ‘What were we supposed to be doing again?’ So they need time to immerse themselves, so whenever we do something new, say it’s using a new technology, it would be ‘Go play, go and explore’, which the girls can’t cope with as much as the boys, the girls want to know ‘Why, what’s the point of this?’. (Miss Hope)

In light of this, I determined that the design of future activities should aim to incorporate an approach that could support both these learning patterns, harnessing the motivational pull of using iPods or iPads to guide an activity and act as a focal point for group collaboration (Gray et al., 2017).

Both teachers suggested that the asynchronous aspect of the linked activities helped their pupils gain an authentic appreciation of the topic, and that the eBooks were important in scaffolding the learning by giving the children a focus for what they were looking for before setting out on the visit (Chen et al., 2003):

Definitely useful, because they knew what they were looking for, rather than me just talking about plants and flowers, they could look at the close-ups, see where to find them, and all the organisation of it was almost sorted by looking through the eBook before we went, so when we got there, they could really focus on the science. (Mrs Baxter)

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In her interview, Miss Hope suggested that other locations schools visit should work with teachers to produce eBooks to help children get the most out of visits:

They should send it out beforehand – like “look out for these things”. They’d have to work alongside teachers ...so they’re covering the right skills and prompting children in the right areas. You’d get a lot more out of visits. Some of them are just in awe when they go for a visit, they just don’t take it in ...if you’ve already visited virtually …you can enjoy what’s around you ...all the internal mapping’s done beforehand, you know where they’re going to find the best information.

In response to my querying the lack of use of the blog, Miss Hope replied: “We did all this class stuff, we went out, got the evidence using the mobile technologies, we came back, we had a designated slot to get them doing the posts, and consecutively, on four weeks, KidBlog was down, it was blocked, to do with browser upgrade”; Mrs Baxter stated simply that time pressures had prevented her.